The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.84 (679 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1852853328 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 448 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
It was a killer on a huge scale.The White Death is an outstanding history of tuberculosis. But, tuberculosis is not just a disease of the past. Thomas Dormandy's engrossing account of the search for a cure is complemented by a description of its complex natural history and by portraits of individual sufferers, including writers, artists, and musicians, whose lives and work were shaped (and often tragically curtailed) by the disease. In many parts of the world it is still a bigger killer than AIDS, while in America and Europe drug-resistant strains threaten its resurgence.. The victims of tuberculosis (usually known as consumption) included not only Keats, The Brontës, Chopin and Chekhov, but members of almost every family
A Consuming disease When the whole world seemed to be suffering with flu last winter I read and thoroughly enjoyed "Flu" by Gina Kolata. I caught the sickness bug (bad pun) and read several more social-history books about deadly diseases and living conditions in the past, and Dormandy's "The White Death" was by far the best. We readers are all familiar with the idea of the limp, frail tubercular Victorian who is tragically going to waste away before his magnus opus is finished, but do we realise that until fairly recently, tuberculosis was so common - in fact expected in certain circles - that . "The White Death is a force to be reckoned with!" according to Rebecca Brown. From Antiquity, tuberculosis has been a killer on a huge scale, ever-present yet lurking rather than epidemic; its explosion in the 1800s went hand-in-hand with industrialization, abetted by bad housing, endless work hours & poverty.For the Victorians, who elevated illness to art forms, the victims of TB were the ultimate in pale & interesting; the roll call of tuberculous genius reads like who's who of artists & writers: Keats, Chopin, the Brontes; Robert Louis Stevenson, Chekhov, Orwell, to name only a few.Thomas Dormandy has written an engrossing account of the amazingly . Mark K. Mcdonough said The Best Work on the Subject. There have been some reasonably satisfying works written on the cultural aspects of tuberculosis, and others on the scientific struggle to understand and control the disease. What makes this work unusually rewarding is that Dormandy (a consultant pathologist and medical writer) possesses the ability and education to bring together TB's medical and cultural aspects. He is equally comfortable discussing the influence of TB on the German Lied tradition and the interaction between the disease organism and the immune system.The White Death is particularly strong on TB's influence
Lawrence and Modigliani. Focusing mostly on western Europe and the U.S., Dormandy vividly details the long struggle against tuberculosis. Dormandy points his research at present-day medical struggles--the global HIV epidemic, he notes, has combined with the emergence of multi-drug resistance to make tuberculosis, once thought almost eradicated, a threat to worldwide health again. Prodigious research and an engaging anecdotal style blend to make this a fascinating foray into the history of medicine. He takes readers through the high points of its history--from the discovery in 1882, by German physician Robert Koch, of the tubercle bacillus through the legendary tubercular deaths of writers, musicians and artists like Katherine Mansfield, George Orwell, D.H. Then he follows the disease as it made its way through crowded, poverty-stricken urban areas. (Mar.) C